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Monthly Archives: July 2014

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Right now there are so many things I am bridging as I move from one place in life to the next. A child off to college, a potential new job, an unexpected September show, even a new phone with all the differences in features to name just a few. Not all are seamless, actually none of them are. (You wouldn’t think phone would be on the list, but new technology can be a challenge!) I have been tackling the phone and the show as they are the only things I can have a modicum of control over. Either I will get the job or I won’t. The child will get off to college whether she packs ahead or the night before. The show is basically all set, just some images to frame and the chosen ones to hang. Which brings me to the phone. I gave in and got a smart phone so I can accept debit and credit cards, and give the camera a try. I am still of the mindset that a phone is for making calls on, not game playing or snap chatting. That being said I really like having the calendar, calculator and note pad as it cuts down on things to carry around. The camera I do enjoy, and I did on my old non smart phone, it is nice to have on hand for when I don’t want to carry a big camera. It does take some getting used to, but I am managing. As far as some of the other features, I probably have more than I will ever use.

A real first world problem: “more than I will ever use.”

Phones are so jammed packed with features that even the bells and whistles have bells and whistles!

An on again off again rain is starting this final week of July, fern weather. Of which we have had a fair amount of this summer. But it makes the ferns cheerful and convivial. Today will be one of those days where lights are needed and it is hard to tell what time of day it is. I have a myriad of errands over this week that all seem to be in different directions so no easy path can be laid out to accomplish them. The only thing I can do it check off each as it gets done in its own time, and try to figure out a loop that can accommodate as many as possible each trip. Some weeks are like that, scattered tasks that seem to have no relation to each other. Yet there must be a thread somewhere hidden deep in the weave that I just can’t see because I am so busy looking at all the separate threads and wondering how they come together. They will though and everything will get done by Friday, maybe even sooner if I just chip away at them methodically.

This is Arthur T. DeMoulas, NOT to be confused with Arthur S. DeMoulas though any confusion would be understandable based on the similarity of the names. The difference lies in the fact that Arthur T. is beloved by his hundreds of employees, past and present. Until just this past week he was the CEO of Market Basket, a large chain of stores in New England that started with just one store in Lowell, MA in the early 1950s. Arthur T. and Arthur S. are grandsons of the original owner, and have been locked in battle for years and years. Arthur T’s firing by Arhtur S’s board has created a firestorm that has seen employees turning out in droves at the company headquarters and customers boycotting the stores. The support for this boss is something rarely seen. The greed of the board is all too common. Any regular shopper at Market Basket will see the same faces for years, moving from cashier on up into management positions. How many workplaces see employees stay for 30, 40 or more years? Obviously, Arthur T. and his Grandfather have been doing something right.

The outcome remains to be seen, Arthur T has offered to buy out the other half of the family and keep Market Basket the institution it is. This would include the rehiring of managers fired for speaking out at rallies, profit sharing and Sunday time and the many other good business practices that place the employees, community and business ethics above more money in already full stockholder pockets. So often there is little that the public can do to try and effect change, and maybe this won’t work, but people came together over it and sent a strong message to the board. It would be a shame to see 71 stores be destroyed. No doubt this will be taught in business courses, the top 10 things not to do to alienate your customers and how not to kill the goose that has laid golden eggs for decades.

In June and July as leases change there is often the chance to get a peek into the empty ones, to see the different spaces and views. This happens to be the north wall of the mill as seen through an east facing studio, only the north wall has them. The window is foggy and I added some texture to increase the dreamy feel. Generally the only way to see these windows is from the railroad tracks, and it just isn’t the same as getting a glimpse of them from the side. They are so wonderfully unusual, sending my mind spinning stories. So, no, the view isn’t Paris, but the story could be.

I passed this old barn on the way home from the shore and had to stop and get a couple of photos as barns are getting few and far between. We had a barn at the side of our property when I was little, the old red type with a silo. It didn’t house any livestock then, but it had in the years before. Pigs, cows and horses all had found shelter there in prior days. The gate along the road was still there and we would swing on it, the loft had some hay remaining in it, but it was too dark and scary to do more than peek at. And the dairy room and pig sty were so completely dark that we never ventured in. The silo came down before my memory. A man stopped and asked if her could buy it for the wood which he wanted to use in his house. I have been told that when he took it down the inside surface of the wood was polished smooth by the years of grain passing over it on its descent. The whole barn eventually was taken down, the huge hand hewn beams off to new homes as decorative elements. The granary went next, years later, and I have no idea what happened to the old equipment it had inside. Only a few people know that a barn ever stood right by the side of Swaggertown Rd, the barnyard has filled in with a variety of trees and the foundation is buried beneath years of leaves and roots. I remember sitting on the roof of the old pig sty, it was an easy clamber if you knew where to place toes and fingers. It allowed a “just above street level” view of the road and a quiet place to think. There was so little traffic in those days a car was something to look at as they passed by the secret spot. There is only 1 photo I know of that shows the barn, I wish there were more taken from all angles and both inside and out. But that is not the case so I have to rely on my memory of it, faulty at best. When I see a barn I often think of the one I knew in childhood, how the bits of hay smelled, how it felt when my brother pulled the big, sliding, door shut behind me saying he had locked it, how the tall grass tickled when we walked through it, the warning to stay away from the old barn well. All of it mixes in my mind like hay dust caught in sunbeams, glinting and spinning as they go by. A barn is a romantic image most of us hold in our minds of an item we revere, but no longer have personal use for in our daily lives. But we are drawn to them nonetheless.